Abstract
Clinico-bacteriological study was done in 51 leprosy patients below 14 years of age. Majority of the patients were males in the age group of 11-14 years. Nearly 84% had not received any prior treatment because of lack of awareness and financial constraints. Only 11.76% had a positive contact history. Skin lesions were present in all cases and 84.3% had lesions mainly on the exposed areas of the body and their number was found to increase significantly with advancing age (p The most common type of skin lesion was borderline tuberculoid (BT) in 53% cases. Positivity of the skin smears increased significantly as the number of the skin lesions per patient increased (p 0.001). Multibacillary cases were seen in 15.6% of cases and found only in the age group of 10-14 years of age. No statistically significant association between BCG vaccination and prevention of leprosy was seen.
Highlights
Leprosy is probably the oldest disease known to mankind
According to the National Leprosy Elimination Programme (NLEP) report of March 2012, there were a total of about 0.13 million cases of leprosy in India, 9.7% of which were children
In the pediatric age group, leprosy often presents as a single hypopigmented patch, which may or may not be anesthetic, and it is confused with other dermatological ailments [6]
Summary
Leprosy is probably the oldest disease known to mankind It is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. According to the National Leprosy Elimination Programme (NLEP) report of March 2012, there were a total of about 0.13 million cases of leprosy in India, 9.7% of which were children. In the pediatric age group, leprosy often presents as a single hypopigmented patch, which may or may not be anesthetic, and it is confused with other dermatological ailments [6]. With this background, we carried out this present work to study the clinico-bacteriological status of leprosy patients under 14 years of age
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